General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere's the thing about "Birthright Citizenship":
UNLESS you are a naturalized citizen, you are a "birthright citizen."
I'm a birthright citizen.
My mother is a birthright citizen.
Her mother was a birthright citizen.
Her mother's mother was a naturalized citizen.
My daughter is a birthright citizen.
My grandson is a birthright citizen.
If [Redacted] wants to 'end birthright citizenship' NONE of us would be citizens. Except maybe my great-grandmother who was naturalized.
What is [Redacted] even talking about?
Amendment 14, Section one, says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
So if [Redacted] takes out the words "born or", we're left with... what? "All persons naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
WTF is he babbling on about? Disenfranchising millions of Americans?
Why is the country not rising up en masse and demanding his resignation?
bewilderedly,
Bright
Glamrock
(11,781 posts)It's all about two things baby.
1) Racism
2) An ignorance of what words actually mean
But primarily #1
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Sure, Trump's not going to be able to do it, for long, but just imagine a nation in which any citizen could be punished and persecuted by being stripped of the benefits and privileges of citizenship. Many strong conservatives already want to regard the rights of all men in our Declaration of Independence as rights of only those who carry the right papers and are on U.S. shores.
How about making liberals ineligible to run for office or to vote after some imagined offence against the state? How about "cleansing" of whole groups from citizenship? Muslims are less than 1% of the population, Jews about 2%. How are they supposed to stop it if we no longer have a meaningful power of the vote, as has happened in liberal democracies that failed?
Not everything is all about race, in fact it's mostly actually about authoritarian power, although of course this currently includes being about race as an initial excuse to get trumpsters to support it.
world wide wally
(21,719 posts)dawg day
(7,947 posts)But the entire point of Trump bringing this up in the week after 11 people were killed in a synagogue by a man who was obsessed with "keeping them out"--
Is to send a message to anti-semites and haters who infest his "base" that he is responding to the killer's call.
No decent person -- even anti-immigrant-- would talk about revoking citizenship of the children of refugees this week...
Trump wants the haters to know he's one of them.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,280 posts)to stir up the MAGAts. It's unconstitutional on its face; even the current Supreme Court wouldn't let him alter the 14th Amendment with an executive order. And I have no doubt that every WH adviser who got through even their first year of law school has told him that. But he doesn't care whether he can actually do it because he just wants to feed a big chunk of bloody meat to his cult members for the purpose of the elections.
onenote
(42,383 posts)what they are talking about is interpreting the amendment so that it doesn't apply to children born to parents who are not in this country legally at the time of the child's birth.
There are very strong arguments that such an interpretation is inconsistent with the amendment's intent. But there are scholars and judges who believe that Congress has the authority (pursuant to section 5 of the amendment) to adopt that interpretation.
The good news is that no one seriously thinks Trump can unilaterally adopt this interpretation and the chances of Congress adopting it (and it has been proposed before) are essentially zero, especially if we take control of the House next week.
MiniMe
(21,677 posts)Mar-alago. The Russians go there to have an anchor baby, I'm sure Vladimar wouldn't mind
912gdm
(959 posts)"Woooooomen get tooooo hysterical to vote!!!!"
"Republicans were doing well in the polls until illeagle wooooooomen voted!!!!"
littlemissmartypants
(22,418 posts)[Redacted] is sublime.
Thank you for the post, TygrBright.
Kicking.
♡lmsp
LeftInTX
(24,560 posts)This is a PR stunt.
How many things has he threatened? He won't do something that will make him a laughing stock.
NeverTrumpDemocrat
(48 posts)It's Trump doing the only thing he has a real talent for -- dividing and controversializing.
He's all reality show. He "didn't come here to make friends."
He's a pretty shitty President no matter how you slice the ideological pie, so he divides, divides and divides again over issues that are just not that important in the big picture -- taking a knee, the caravan, "birthright citizenship" -- because there at the faultline of the Red vs. the Blue he shores up his own base and knee-jerks his opponents.
When your team sucks, the only things that will keep the people in the stands is us-vs-them fandom drama. He knows that or at least someone around him does.